his rival’s return.  He was compensated for the slight put upon him by receiving his long-deferred consecration to Norwich at the hands of the pope.  There is small reason for believing that he was exceptionally greedy or unpopular.  But his withdrawal removed an influence which had done its work for good, and was becoming a national danger.  Langton henceforth could act as the real head of the English Church.  In 1222, he held an important provincial council at Oseney abbey, near Oxford, where he issued constitutions, famous as the first provincial canons still recognised as binding in our ecclesiastical courts.  He began once more to concern himself with affairs of state, and Hubert found him a sure ally.  Bishop Peter, disgusted with his declining influence, welcomed his appointment as archbishop of the crusading Church at Damietta.  He took the cross, and left England with Falkes de Breaute as his companion.  Learning that the crescent had driven the cross out of his new see, he contented himself with making the pilgrimage to Compostella, and soon found his way back to England, where he sought for opportunities to regain power.

Relieved of the opposition of Bishop Peter, Hubert insisted on depriving barons of doubtful loyalty of the custody of royal castles, and found his chief opponent in William Earl of Albemarle.  In dignity and possessions, Albemarle was not ill-qualified to be a feudal leader.  The son of William de Fors, of Oleron, a Poitevin adventurer of the type of Falkes de Breaute, he represented, through his mother, the line of the counts of Aumale, who had since the Conquest ruled over Holderness from their castle at Skipsea.  The family acquired the status of English earls under Stephen, retaining their foreign title, expressed in English in the form of Albemarle, being the first house of comital rank abroad to hold an earldom with a French name unassociated with any English shire.  During the civil war Albemarle’s tergiversations, which rivalled those of the Geoffrey de Mandeville of Stephen’s time, had been rewarded by large grants from the victorious party.  Since 1219 he suffered slight upon slight, and in 1220 was stripped of the custody of Rockingham Castle.  Late in that year Hubert resolved to enforce an order, promulgated in 1217, which directed Albemarle to restore to his former subtenant Bytham Castle, in South Kesteven, of which he was overlord, and of which he had resumed possession on account of the treason of his vassal.  The earl hurried away in indignation from the king’s Christmas court, and in January, 1221, threw himself into Bytham, eager to hold it by force against the king.  For a brief space he ruled over the country-side after the fashion of a baron of Stephen’s time.  He plundered the neighbouring towns and churches, and filled the dungeons of Castle Bytham with captives.  On the pretext of attending a council at Westminster he marched southwards, but his real motive was disclosed when he suddenly attacked the castle of Fotheringhay.